No party emerged unscathed from the crossfire that occurred on Tuesday in the plenary session of the Madrid City Council. On the day commemorating the fight against sexist violence, the municipal government, led by José Luis Martínez-Almeida, found itself with its back to the wall on both sides. On the left, Más Madrid councilor Mar Barberán accused popular parties of “perpetuating” gender violence by cutting equality services in the municipality. The PSOE has accused Almeida’s party of using women as a “bargaining chip” in its deals with Vox in territories such as the Valencian Community. And, at the other extreme, the councilor and deputy spokesperson of Vox, Carla Toscano, supported the denialist discourse of the “feminist choir”, as she herself defined sexist violence. Faced with the opposition’s offensive, Almeida’s PP asserted its equality policies against the “walls” of the left and the far right.
“Today we commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and we do it with the workers of equality spaces on strike,” said Barberán. The councilor of Rita Maestre’s party confronted the Equality delegate of the Madrid City Council, José Fernández, about the reduction of municipal resources and services, at a time when some of the staff of the capital’s equality spaces are on strike. Numerous users and workers of this network shouted on October 28: “Spaces of equality are not sold, they are defended”, fearing that Strategy for equality between men and women in the city of Madrid involves the dismantling of their work centers.
The local Executive Equality chief did not hesitate in his response. Fernández did not hesitate to defend the PP’s “fight against gender violence” and recalled the trial against the former leader of the Más Madrid Íñigo Errejón for the accusation of sexual abuse against the actress Elisa Mouliaá: “There are no lessons on your part. You have Monedero, Errejón and you are complicit with the Government (of Spain), where Koldo and Ábalos are.”
In the same direction as Más Madrid, the socialist councilor Meritxell Tizón Gutiérrez defended a proposal that invites the Equality Area to withdraw the draft equality strategy of the Municipality of Madrid and to strengthen the municipal network against gender violence. “Today is a day to reaffirm a commitment, to not look the other way and to take responsibility for doing everything in our power to protect women and ensure they live a life free from violence.”
For Tizón, this commitment does not involve “dismantling what already works,” but rather strengthening feminist policies. “With the new strategy you intend to impose, all the progress in equality policies that have been made in this city over the last 25 years is swept away in one fell swoop.” The socialist recalled Fernández when her party approved a Vox proposal in September to make it mandatory to inform women who wanted to have an abortion of the alleged consequences of post-abortion syndrome, and who then assured them that it had been a mistake. “An ideological agenda that we have already verified when they approved that shameful Vox proposal which aimed to criminalize women.”
In the plenary session of the Madrid City Council, Vox’s proclamations against spaces of equality are frequent and this Tuesday the party did not go off script. The change in status of Ortega Smith, removed from the position of deputy spokesperson of the ultra formation in the Congress of Deputies, has not generated changes in the far right’s roadmap. Councilor and deputy spokesperson Carla Toscano said that men were “the real victims” of November 25 in a speech in which she mixed a series of historical events that have little to do with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. “I’m not going to believe that men are worth less. Because a man is my son, a man is my father, men were the ones who evangelized and discovered America, the ones who began the reconquest, the ones who discovered penicillin or anesthesia. Men were the ones who wrote Don Quixote OR The Silmarilion“Man was the one who gave his life for all of us.”
Toscano used irony to attack the PP for reaching consensus with the left in implementing feminist policies. “Once upon a time there was a political party with liberal and conservative touches that was more or less okay,” he began. “But one day a great dragon appeared to him (left) and told him that to get the treasure, which for that party meant power, they had to make a deal. If he sold his soul, the great dragon would give him the power he wanted. If that party went over to the dark side, to the left and to feminism, he would get that treasure. And from there the change began,” he said in disbelief in the plenary hall of Cybele’s Palace.
Like any other “story”, that of counselor Vox also has good and bad ones. She herself explained it like this: “The villains are feminism and all those who promote it. The heroes are the broken men who get up every morning with the intention of reclaiming their children and clearing their names.” A story that contrasts with the dramatic reality depicted by the data from the Ministry of Equal Opportunities. In 2025, 39 women with full names were murdered by their partners or ex-partners. From 1 January 2003 to today, 1,334 women have been killed due to gender violence, in addition to 65 minors since 2013. And another 489 children have been orphaned due to sexist violence. The latest sexist murder was that of a 60-year-old woman in Alpedrete (Madrid), who died at the hands of her partner after 50 stab wounds, who then committed suicide. The mayor of the town of Madrid, Juan Fernández (PP), avoided talking about murder due to the sexist violence.
